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.We had dinner in a very good restaurant, and I brought him up-to-date on my activities.He laughed a great deal, but softly and sympathetically.There was the look in his eyes of a bored child who has stumbled upon a strange and intriguing toy."We'll have to do something about you," he kept saying."Yes, we'll certainly have to do something.""What kind of—uh—work are you doing now?" I asked."Bell-hopping," he said."I'm down at the H—Hotel.It's not quite as good as stealing, but it's a change.I was getting pretty bored with the con.""That's a pretty swell hotel," I said."I've been in worse," Allie shrugged."They've got very good locks on the doors.""Could I"—I hesitated—"Do you suppose I could—?""Why not? Why don't you ask?""Aw, I guess I better not," I said."I have to go to school.I've been laying out a lot, but I have to go.""That's all right," said Allie."You can work at night.They have a hard time keeping boys on the night shift.""I—I guess not," I said."I—they wouldn't hire me.My folks wouldn't want me working at night, and—""Kind of lost your nerve, huh?" Allie nodded wisely."Afraid to try anything for fear you won't make it.That won't do.Drink your coffee, and let's get going."We went, with me lagging behind and protesting that I'd better not.At the side door of the hotel, Allie drew me up to the leaded panes and pointed to a paunchy, pompous-looking man with a carnation in the buttonhole of his black broadcloth coat."That's the man you see, the assistant manager on this shift," said Allie."Now you go in there and tell him he either gives you a job or you'll piss in his hip pockets.""Aw, for—" I tried to break loose."Do it your own way, then.I'm going to stand right here and watch you.""Huh-uh, Allie," I muttered."I don't look good enough, and—and I got a pain in my stomach, an' he'll think I'm crazy asking for a job in a place like—"Allie's hand closed around my forearm in a grip that was surprisingly and painfully strong."You get in there," he said, firmly."If you don't, I'll yell for the cops.I'll say you made me an indecent proposal."Something told me he would do exactly that.I went in.The assistant manager glanced at me wearily as I began a jumbled application for a job on nights.Then, while I was still mumbling he murmured a word which sounded like "hate" and which, I was sure, summarized his feelings about me, and strolled away.Relieved that he had not had me arrested, I turned and tottered toward the door.I had taken only a few steps when a swarthy, slickhaired young man with CAPTAIN emblazoned across his wine-colored jacket appeared at my side."You're going the wrong way, Mac," he said smoothly."The tailor shop's back this way.""T-tailor shop?" I said.He grinned and took me by the elbow."Couldn't understand Old Mushmouth, huh? You'll get used to him.Now, let's get you fixed up with a uniform."18It was a weird, wild and wonderful world that I had walked into, the luxury hotel life of the Roaring Twenties.It was a world which typified rugged individualism at its best—or worst, a world whose urbane countenance revealed nothing of the seething and sinister turmoil of its innards, a world whose one rule.was that you did nothing you could not get away with.There was no pity in that world.The usual laws governing rewards and punishments did not obtain.It was not what you did that mattered, but how you did it.Nominally, there were strictly enforced rules against such things as getting drunk on duty, intimacy with lady guests and forcing tips from the stingy.But the management could have knowledge that you were guilty of all those crimes, and as long as you did them in such a way as not to give rise to complaints or disturb the routine of the hotel, nothing would be done.Rather, you would be regarded as a boy who knew his way around and was on his toes.And this attitude, I suppose, was not nearly so strange as it seems.It was the bellboy who was always in the closest contact with this hurly-burly world, a world always populated by strangers of unknown background and unpredictable behavior.Alone and on his own, with no one to turn to for advice or help, he had to please and appease those strangers: the eccentric, the belligerent, the morbidly depressed.He had to spot the potential suicide and soothe the fighting drunk and satisfy the whims of those who were determined not to be satisfied.And always, no matter how he felt, he had to do those things swiftly and unobtrusively.Briefly, he had to be nervy and quick-thinking.He had to be adequate to any emergency.And a boy who was inadequate in his own emergencies was also apt to be so in those concerning the hotel.In a word, he wasn't "sharp." He didn't "know his way around," and thus, axiomatically, did not belong around.In the indictments lodged against bellboys in the hotel "growler," the rough equivalent of a ship's log, one word appeared over and over—caught.A boy was fired or fined or turned over to the police because he had been caught in an offense, not merely because he had committed one.There was no day off in the hotel world.The night shift worked seven days a week, from eleven at night until seven in the morning.The day shifts were also on the job seven days, but their hours were adjusted to the then universal long-day, short-day of the hotel world.One of the two shifts came on at seven in the morning, quit at noon, returned at six and worked until eleven at night.The following day it came to work at noon and quit at six P.M., the other shift working the double-watch long-day.One night, when there was an unexpected flurry of business, a day boy was held over onto the night shift.It was his second holdover of the day, and he had been on duty since seven in the morning.So, after the business had been taken care of, he claimed the "late" boy's privilege of a room, and fell exhausted into bed
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